Thursday, March 13, 2008

Sixpence None the Richer

Browsing through my next-to-last issue of CCM Magazine (the 'print' version is being discontinued after the April issue), I found out that recording artists Sixpence None the Richer will be coming back! They had disbanded a few years back. You may or may not be familiar with how the name of the band came about. Lead singer Leigh Nash shared the story when she appeared on the David Letterman show in August, 1999.

Although Nash has never completely overcome her youthful nervousness on stage, she bravely walked over to a chair on the "Late Show" stage following her band's performance.

After asking where the band's name comes from, Letterman teasingly interrupted Nash to ask if he could stop by her hotel room after the show. Nash's blank silence stopped him cold, chastening him into an apology. With that, she proceeded to finish her story.

"It comes from a book by C.S. Lewis... called Mere Christianity," she resumed. "A little boy asks his father if he can get a sixpence - a very small amount of English currency - to go and get a gift for his father. The father gladly accepts the gift and he's really happy with it, but he also realizes that he's not any richer for the transaction..."

"He bought his own gift," Letterman responded. "That's right," Nash continued. "C.S. Lewis was comparing that to his belief that God has given him, and us, the gifts that we possess, and to serve Him the way we should, we should do it humbly... realizing how we got the gifts in the first place."

5 comments:

Wow, thats an awesome moment of grace reckoning. I pray it somehow sinks into the heart and mind of David Letterman one day and He beholds this reckoning truth made surreal in that divine moment when God cried out to God, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." from the cross.

"And now we begin to see what it is that the New Testement is always talking about. It talks about Christians being "born again"; it talks about them "putting on Christ; about Christ being formed in us"; about our coming to "have the mind of Christ".Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out- as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out. They mean something much more than that. They mean that a real Person, Christ, here and now, in that very room where you are saying your prayers, is doing things to you. It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has. At first, only for moment. Then for longer periods. Finally, if all goes well, turning you permanently into a differant sort of thing; into a new little Christ, a being which, in its own small way, has the same kind of life as God; which shares in His power, joy, knowledge and eternity." CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

And this one from this same very powerful book by C.S Lewis. He was confused in some doctrinal truths but he did see a very key ingredient of the work of God I think:

"....our Lord is like the dentists. If you give Him an inch, He will take an ell. Dozens of people come to Him to be cured of some one particular sin which they are ashamed of (like masturbation or physical cowardice) or which is obviously spoiling daily life (like bad temper or drunkeness). Well, he will cure it all right: but He will not stop there. That may be all you asked; but if once you call Him in, he will give you the full treatment." CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

"Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and try to carry it out- as a man may read what Plato or Marx said and try to carry it out."

Man, I think that's right on!

It is not a question of a good man who died two thousand years ago. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when He created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has."

I had heard the story of that meeting several times. It's on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJDldjmb_04 - it's not nearly as cold an exchange as I had heard. She blushed and smiled and it was obvious he was joking.